Take action on your empathy

Posted on:28 July 2014

By:Irene

Hello Flour City TED heads! Welcome to week two of our video release party! From this week forward we will be releasing two TEDxFlourCity2014 talks online a week! Stay tuned to our facebook page for notifications as soon each video is posted.

This week’s first release is the TEDxFlourCity2014 talk given by Noah Wagoner.

Noah Wagoner, telling his story at TEDxFlourCity2014

Noah Wagoner is the co-founder of the Self-Made Men, along with Jason Robert Ballard. Started in 2009, the organization provides an online center for education, advocacy and mentorship for transgender males and has so far helped 15,000 transgender men world-wide.

In his idea of an ideal world, Noah says “people have more empathy. They’d do more with their empathy.” During an informative and moving TEDxFlourCity talk he shared highlights of his gender transition journey. His talk conveys both the empathy his family showed him during the transition, and his empathy for them as he recognized that they had to transition with him and get to know his new gender identity.

One of the biggest insights Noah gained during his transition and through doing his work is “People are inherently good and they want to learn, they want to know the information, but they think it’s just a social thing, they have no idea that there are medical and legal issues, that we don’t have our rights in place…people want to help but they don’t know how to.”

It was important to Noah and Jason to offer resources that weren’t available to them during their transitions, and provide a community of support that not all trans people have. His talk and the Self-Made Men website are both wonderful resources not only for trans people, but for anyone who wants to learn about the transgender community.

Watch Noah Wagoner’s talk “What’s Left? Our Rights”:

If you loved Noah’s story or learned something new, we would love for you to share it, in the spirit of TED. Scroll over the “share” button below to pass it on. Stay tuned to blog to be the first to catch the next TEDxFlourCity2014 talk released online. We’ll see you back here later in the week…